"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Maryland Lyric Opera presents Menotti's timeless classic holiday opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. One of the most popular holiday classics of all time, Amahl and the Night Visitorstells the story of a miraculous encounter between Amahl, a boy with a lame leg, and the Three Kings. The moving tale is a timeless and inspiring message of how faith, charity, unselfish love, and good deeds can work miracles. This family-friendly holiday classic is a one-act, 45-minute opera, sung in English, and performed with two pianos and professional soloists. Piano accompaniment provided by Christopher Koelzer and MDLO Founder and Executive Director Brad Clark. Conducted by MDLO Associate Conductor Joshua Bavaroand directed by MDLO Interim Artistic Director, Shelley Waite.

Amahl and the Night Visitors was the first network television Christmas special to become an annual tradition. There had already been several television productions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol since about 1947, but they had not been shown annually or presented by the same television network, with the same general technical staff, as Amahl was. Until 1963, Amahl was nearly always presented with many of the same singers and production staff. From 1951 until 1966 it was presented every year on NBC (which commissioned Menotti to write it) on or around Christmas Eve, as an episode of an existing anthology series, such as The Alcoa Hour, NBC Television Opera, or the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The 1978 production of Amahl also premiered on NBC, before it went to cable television in the early 1980s.